<div>About this whole resurrection of WAR thingy.</div>
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<div>I have confirmed:</div>
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<div>Me</div>
<div>Buckley</div>
<div>Chris</div>
<div>Dylan</div>
<div>Iain</div>
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<div>With Mike Downey as a maybe, it sounds like?</div>
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<div>5. 6 if we count Mike.</div>
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<div>Awfully small, but hopefully people can advertise? I know from last time that I suck at that.</div>
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<div>So, I'm going to lay out some stuff here.</div>
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<div>First off, there are OOC tasks we need to know someone is doing. Not think someone else is doing, but *absolutely know* that someone is doing them. They're vital to the success of any resurrection. My neurotic attempting-to-be-Atlas nature means I'd try to do all of these myself, except that I suck at these tasks, said after having attempted to do them all (except art, you don't want to see me doing art...ever...) for WAR last time. I'm *interested* in about half of these, but the very reason I'm putting these up here is because I suck and therefore should really not do them.</div>
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<div>What are they? Well, I'll set them out, each as a task area someone can volunteer for, along with any potential issues/problems/whatnot that I see.</div>
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<div>Web stuff - WAR's historic bane, along with advertising. Buckley suggested a Wiki as our website - an excellent idea, but vandals and spam would be a problem. A second question would be hosting - unless someone can rustle up free hosting for such a Wiki (or a website), it'll take *real money*.:(</div>
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<div>Advertising: Finding places to advertise is only part of the problem. Writing a good ad is demonically hard - we're a niche thing no matter what kind of setting we go for, but we still need new people. I mentioned last night that I saw 6-8 people as a minimum size. Even if we have that now, we still need to advertise - just so that we have enough people for when people inevitably take a break/quit/get hit by a bus.</div>
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<div>I will, for the record, continue my role as newbie-handler once they reach us. I actually *like* doing that work, even as I see how others dislike it.</div>
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<div>It might be a good thing if, somehow, we advertise off-web, maybe by means of fliers and stuff?</div>
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<div>Graphics and Art: Sort of in conjunction with the first two issues, we need someone artsy who can do stuff like banner ads.</div>
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<div>Next up:</div>
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<div>Stuff we need to decide on by consensus. Not, dear God, by vote...by consensus, because they're the building blocks. If we can't come to a consensus on these, we'll never get anywhere with implementation.</div>
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<div>First off, Setting.</div>
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<div>If we're looking at everything, we may as well look at setting.</div>
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<div>Personally, I've heard a bunch of ideas, from Napoleoonic-era WAR to Space WAR. They all strike me as potentially fun in different ways.</div>
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<div>Even for Modern or Near-future WAR, we run into the questions of work required and just how much we can expect out of any playerbase in terms of compelling, IC writing and decisionmaking.</div>
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<div>I'm going to throw out my opinions as far as the general categories.</div>
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<div>Historical WAR: Could be set in the Napoleonic era, the Renaissance, the Medieval age, whenever. Specific work required really depends on the specific era chosen, but in any event requires a *lot* of front-end historical research. May, in truth, require some knowledge of languages other than English in order to accomplish that research.</div>
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<div>Quality of writing and immersion is my biggest question, though: In my not-really-humble opinion, WAR was at its best when it was *immersive*. This sometimes meant being tightly-researched, but just as often happened when we managed to latch onto something and breathe in the atmosphere, even if not all the details worked. Often it was a mix of the two: I remember really being immersed in my character(s) when me and Chris were writing the US-China summit. Tightly-researched, yes, but also hugely because of atmosphere. Chris played his character to the hilt, and I honestly felt like Williams throughout that whole situation.</div>
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<div>Historical writing, in that sense, is *hard*. It's devilishly hard not to play someone with modern attitudes and knowledge, just dressed up in funny clothes. And yet if we don't pull it off, if we don't pull off all writing characters with period attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, etc, it all risks falling flat, leaving WAR coming off as a giant game of Risk.</div>
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<div>Modern WAR: One variant of what I will call "WAR Classic", this is the older version. Setting is Now, not the near-future. Saves us from thinking about times, dates, and all that stuff, but risks are what Buckley usefully called having too much information, and the problem of diverging so much from reality, either immediately or over time, as to be inaccessible to newbies, prompting restarts.</div>
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<div>Near-future WAR: The other variant, this is what I tried to do with the 2013 scenario. Setting is roughly close to the present, but advanced ahead a few years - 2013 was initially picked semi-arbitrarily, because it conveniently meant a new US Presidential term and it advanced us 6ish years. The information problem remains to an extent, as does the divergence issue...In the case of the original 2013 scenario, I think we got lapped by reality from behind - I certainly, when writing in 2007, never expected an Obama Presidency. Or the recession.</div>
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<div>Work required? Mostly data-gathering and brainstorming, like what we're familiar with. It's still significant, but perhaps not as much as the historical or sci-fi variants. Quality of writing and decisionmaking: Well, WAR has had its bright and shining moments up til now, but it's also had its...Well, it's also had moments better left unmentioned because they were nothing resembling quality, agreed? We can almost all pull out examples from nearly 10 years of play, let's not get started. That said, there seems to be a lower "barrier to entry" with WAR Classic (in either version) than I would expect in Historical or Sci-fi versions. There isn't the issue of "attitude gap", at least not to the same extent.</div>
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<div>Sci-fi versions of WAR:</div>
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<div>WAR in Spaaaaaaaace! (There, got it out of my system.:)) Or Cyberpunk WAR, or whatever. Requires a shitload of work in terms of world-building. Some can be accomplished in-play, but a lot would need to be accomplished before we ever got off the ground.</div>
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<div>Quality of writing and decisionmaking can pose as much problems here as with Historical WAR, for much the same reasons.</div>
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<div>Are there any other setting possibilities I've left out?</div>
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<div>Anyhow...Yeah.</div>
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<div>One thing this does set out for me is What WAR Is. Not in a setting way, but in a general "mission-statement-y" way. You may not agree with everything written, but I'm calling things as I see them. Including this really because it's been on my mind.</div>
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<div>WAR (which may or may not need a renaming) is a game, yes. It cannot hope to be a simulation, even when it has simulation characteristics, and even though WAR has classically been an excellent teacher of politics and international affairs. Not a wargame, though it does include war, as seen tactically, operationally, and strategically (and from a grand strategy perspective). In many cases, much of the fun comes from desperately trying to -avoid- the general war that will in many cases end the game. It is not, strictly, a roleplaying game in the conventional sense. It may include RPG devices - it could even include stats and things like that if players felt so inclined. It does come imbued with a heavy dose of roleplay, everything from action posts (combat and similar RP) to diplomacy to strictly social scenes and character development, and players tend to play their roles, on the best days, very immersively, like the best roleplayers.</div>
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<div>WAR is as much the OOC surroundings as the actual play - the reality is that the game only really works when players are active on an out-of-character basis with other players, whether that be through instant messenger chatter, IM chats of multiple players, or chatter on the OOC list. WAR players are opinionated, yes; play often requires a thick skin, and the OOC conversations and debates and such do as well. At the same time, though, WAR is best played with the game full-contact, but with the players behind the characters still able to be friends...of sorts, anyway. We may never meet in real life to drink beers together, but the idea is that the game shouldn't prevent the bonds of friendship forming such that we could if we wanted to, or even if we just ran into each other and somehow figured out the connection. The moment IC activity causes OOC sniping (or worse), we've done something wrong. Not just one of us, but all of us. Just because we can ICly be at each other's throats gives no excuse for that to carry over into OOC terms.</div>
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<div>WAR is not meant to be educational: We play for fun, not as a requirement for any course. Telling a good story may occasionally beat out realism, though (particularly in a modern or historical setting) we've found realism to be extremely helpful to our endeavors. Nonetheless, WAR *has the possibility* to teach about many things - and players should "come to the table" willing to learn from play, both about the subjects at hand and stuff not necessarily apparent. WAR can teach the attentive player much about its subjects through the activity of play, and about many things not strictly within our remit, whether that be human behavior (broadly speaking) or any number of other things. Including, though this is not fully advisable, about oneself. Or ar least certain aspects thereof.</div>
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<div>WAR is about writing, though it is more competitive than most MUSHes, MOOs, or most freeform RP of other types. We compete, and compete hard, but there is no way to "win" at WAR - and trying to win like WAR is any other game is not taken well. We compete in order to write a fun story - ultimately a cooperative endeavor. This story may, or may not, have an end. We're not sure. Finding out is part of the adventure.</div>
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<div>So, summary of all this babble:</div>
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<div>Go back and read my babble, dammit. You win no points by skipping to the end.</div>
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<div>We need people to volunteer for the OOC tasks set out above - multiple people can do a single task, but cooperating in such cases seems like a good idea, and in any case these need to be done.</div>
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<div>If for some reason they can't be done, well...then we're a bit stuck, and I'd be open to ideas on how to navigate out of the stuckness.</div>
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<div>Setting, like I said, should really be decided by consensus - and no, don't just go "I'll do what everybody else wants" and be passive-aggressive. Silence in this case does not equal consent.</div>
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<div>Regardless of whatever else, I'm kinda sorta claiming "ownership" of WAR, insofar as that means -anything- (It doesn't, except that I might break tie votes or something if we ever need to vote on stuff), because I basically had both the idea to restart WAR and to actually dig out this list to use for such a purpose.</div>
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<div>Let's decide the setting of WAR, all that good stuff, then we'll figure out GM for play purposes.</div>
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<div>John</div>